Feature: The nine lives of women

Balancing act? Rubbish, says Shane Watson. Secretly, modern woman is actually having it all

The great cry today is that women now have to be so many sorts of woman, it’s a miracle we cope. To be a good mother, ambitious worker, sex kitten, etc, all in the space of a day, is — the theory goes — the burden of the modern female.

But just when we thought we’d won the sympathy vote, it looks like we’ve been rumbled. According to a recent survey, men actually envy the variety of roles that women experience. They wish they could step out of their breadwinning shoes to stay at home and bond with the baby; and they’d quite like to be able to get drunk and giggly sometimes and be driven home and put to bed. It may look tough shifting from party girl to milky mother in the space of minutes, but they’ ve twigged that this ability to be several different people simultaneously is really